Decoding Comic Books & Reality: Why I Love Supergirl

Origin stories and Supergirl's sacrifice in the comic book of Crisis of Infinite Earths

In my creation of a new comic book and mythos with my Dragon Warriors saga, I have been doing a lot of reading and re-reading of comic books. Apologies to my little sister for many of the accidental borrowing permanently of a few of them! And much like how Tarantino said that he didn’t go to film school, he watched films… I didn’t go to comic book creating school (that is probably a thing I am sure of it), I am reading comics to be inspired by the greats who came before me. The beauty of comic books is that there are many superheroes, and much like the pantheon of gods, that represent the multi-faceted beings that we are - as well as the complexity of the likewise multi-faceted reality we are living out our existence in.

A personal favorite superhero of mine, that I incidentally also cosplay a lot as, is SUPERGIRL. Since her creation in 1959, Supergirl has been killed, temporarily replaced with non-Kryptonian versions and rebooted. Due to this, her origin has been modified and revised several times. There’s also a movie of Supergirl in 1984 as well as a live-action which has some cross-over into the Arrow verse universe, but for today’s post, I am going to keep things comic book canon.

The Origins of Supergirl

When Supergirl was first created, her origin story was that Kara Zor-El is Superman's teenager cousin, born to Zor-El—Jor-El's brother and Superman's uncle—and Allura in Argo City, a Kryptonian city that survived the demise of Krypton thanks to an energy bubble-like force-field erected by Zor-El. When Kara was fifteen, a meteor shower pierced the dome surrounding Argo City protecting the Argonians from the radioactive soil. Before Kryptonite poisoning could claim their daughter's life, Zor-El and his wife Allura built a space rocket and sent her to Earth where she was found by Superman. Her cousin trained her until she was ready to don the mantle as Supergirl.

The Crisis on Infinite Earths

The Crisis on Infinite Earths was a Multiversal catastrophe that resulted in the destruction of countless parallel universes, and the recreation of a single positive matter universe (and an antimatter universe) at the dawn of time. In this storyline, Supergirl dies and sacrifices herself to save reality. It is at this point the previous origin of Supergirl also dies. The storyline is super convoluted and it was an effort from DC Comics to “clean-up” the multiverse that was initially created. Stories dealing with time travel and multiverses are tough to do “clean” so the jury is out on how successful that was.

Interestingly enough this comic book came out in April 1985; the same month and year I was born.

Rebirth of Supergirl and Story

Supergirl’s death shocked the world, because it was supposed to be “permanent”. It wasn’t until 2004 that Supergirl was reborn with a new origin story.

In her updated origin, Kara is actually older than Kal-El, being fifteen when Krypton exploded. Argo City was saved thanks to Zor-El researching Brainiac's technology and using his findings to build a force-field around the city. Nonetheless, a Brainiac's android activated and started wrecking the city and killing everyone. Zor-El and Allura shoved Kara inside a space rocket and blasted her into space, asking her to find and look after her baby cousin. Unfortunately, Kara's space rocket got stuck in a Kryptonite asteroid and the pod's emergency systems put her in suspended animation.

Thirty years later, Kara's pod crash-landed in Gotham's bay, where she was found by Superman and Batman. Wonder Woman insisted on taking her in to train her, and Kara spent several weeks in Themyscira until Darkseid abducted her. After being rescued, Kara made the choice to become Supergirl.

There was a more updated origin story in 2011, which is slightly different in the sense that Supergirl orbited the Sun after being blasted off from Krypton for several decades after crash landing on Earth. Kara awoke from her artificially-induced dream to find Krypton was gone for decades, she was stranded in an alien world and her baby cousin was an adult. For all these reasons she was confused and full of grief and anger for a while during which she struggled to adapt to Earth.

Why I love Supergirl

Due to her storylines, as well as her sacrifice to save all of reality, I have a great love and affection for Supergirl. Her coming to realization of being a hero was one that was not quite so clear cut and easy. Having superpowers is one thing, it is quite another to make a conscious choice to be a superhero.

I hope you liked this deep dive into the origin story of Supergirl and why I believe that there’s so much juicy decoding within comic books! Stay super my friends, until next time.